By Scott Brinton
Environmental advocate Morris Kramer perches himself on a grassy knoll beside the Loop Parkway overlooking Middle Bay, which lies between Alder Island and Point Lookout. As cars whiz behind him on their way to the Long Beach barrier island, Kramer bobs his head, peeking between the poison ivy-coated scrub pines in search of what he says is killer seaweed.
Yup, killer seaweed.
It's a recent Friday, with a light haze blocking much of Kramer's bay view. Soon, though, he spots his target. It's a giant seaweed "raft," roughly the size of a basketball court, floating slowly along the bay's edge.
In scientific circles, the seaweed is known as Ulva lactuca, a green, broad-leafed species that grows abundantly in South Shore waters. Kramer contends that nitrogen-loaded wastewater from Nassau County's Bay Park sewage-treatment plant and other smaller plants, such as those in Jones Beach, Long Beach and Lawrence, as well as stormwater runoff from area streets that is laden with lawn fertilizers, is accelerating Ulva lactuca's growth far beyond normal levels. So, Kramer says, what was once a harmless plant that sat unnoticed at the bays' bottom is now destroying local waters.
"Our bays, adjacent streams, canals and various waterways are dying," says Kramer, a longtime Atlantic Beach resident and retired New York City school teacher who has spent years studying seaweed's effect on the bays. "West Bay, from the Atlantic Beach bridge to the Long Beach bridge, is already dead. Middle Bay, from the Long Beach bridge to the Meadowbrook State Parkway bridge, is dying. And East Bay, from the Meadowbrook bridge to the Wantagh State Parkway bridge, is seriously ill."
According to Kramer and other experts, Ulva lactuca now grows in the bays from 16 inches to 16 feet high. Weakened by the relentless tides, it breaks into pieces. Much of the seaweed floats to the surface, forming rafts that eventually come ashore on local beaches, where they putrefy and smell like rotten eggs as they bake in the sun.
Whatever seaweed doesn't make it to the top sinks to the bottom, where it rots. The process of decay robs fish and other marine species of life-giving dissolved oxygen, killing off many of them, particularly hard-shell creatures like clams that can't swim away to healthier waters, as fish can often do.
Local fishermen are well aware of the seaweed, which they say has grown dramatically in recent years. "There's a lot of it," says Jesse York, who is president of the Atlantic Beach Rod and Gun Club and has fished area waters for 62 years. "Three-quarters of the tide, you can walk across it."
Kramer foresees a time in the near future when South Shore bays become underwater wastelands, choked to extinction by Ulva lactuca. The Bay Park sewage plant, the advocate says, "dumps millions of gallons of wastewater into our very narrow, shallow bay, about 600 feet from Washington Boulevard in Long Beach -- every day. This is more than the bay can sustain and still live."
To be precise, Bay Park sends an estimated 50 to 55 million gallons of wastewater into the bays daily, county officials say.
Kramer wants Nassau County to extend Bay Park's outflow pipe from Middle Bay three miles into the Atlantic Ocean, where sewage wastewater would presumably break down better amid the ocean's more vigorous tides, posing less of a threat to marine life. Kramer has begun a quiet campaign to have the pipe built that he promises will grow louder over time. The first step would be to conduct an environmental impact study of the pipe proposal, which could cost more than $100,000, says Kramer. He would like New York State to fund such a study.
A momentous task at hand
Indeed, extending the Bay Park pipe would be a momentous undertaking. Estimates are that lengthening the pipe by more than three miles could cost the financially strapped county between $100 to $200 million, money that county officials say isn't available.
During the mid-1970s, the county extended the pipe for the Cedar Creek sewage treatment plant in Wantagh more than two miles into the ocean. The project cost roughly $75 million and followed a county-commissioned Columbia University study of the bay, which found a precipitous decline in water quality owing to sewage wastewater.
According to expert sources, the Bay Park plant was under consideration during the '70s to have its pipe extended, as well. Federal funds needed for the project dried up, however, and so did the project.
During the late 1990s, the county hired McLaren-Hart, a New Jersey-based engineering firm, to conduct a $2 million, two-year study of the Bay Park plant, after residents in the East Rockaway area complained about foul odors from the plant. The study found that Bay Park did not emit potentially harmful chemicals, either into the water or the air. The study pointed to runoff from storm drains, rather than the Bay Park plant, as the chief culprit in polluting the bays.
Despite such findings, Kramer says the Bay Park plant's negative effect on the bays can't be overstated. He argues that no matter how good a sewage treatment plant is, it will still give off nitrogen, the key ingredient that speeds up seaweed growth.
Kramer has a sympathetic ear in county Legislator David Denenberg (D-Merrick), who is an attorney and environmental engineer. Denenberg understands Kramer's arguments, and he too would like to see the pipe lengthened, but notes the county can't afford the exorbitant price of such a project. He'd like to see a Sewer and Storm Water Authority created, because such an authority would have better borrowing power than the county to finance projects like a longer pipe.
Denenberg is concerned that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will eventually require all municipalities to pipe treated sewage into the ocean rather than local waterways. Denenberg says the EPA is requiring New York City and North Shore villages like Great Neck to clean up their sewage treatment plants, or find places other than the Long Island Sound to pump treated sewage, because of the negative effect wastewater is reported to have on the Sound.
Piping the Bay Park plant into the ocean would "probably have to be done, one would think," Denenberg says. Nina Habib, an EPA spokeswoman, says there are no immediate plans to require all municipalities to pipe sewage wastewater into the ocean.
The EPA, though, will most likely require storm drains to be equipped with filters to siphon off harmful chemicals before they get into "essential habitats" such as clam beds, says Ronald Masters, the Town of Hempstead's commissioner of conservation and waterways.
The town and state Department of Environmental Conservation share regulatory authority over 17,000 acres of bays and wetlands along the South Shore. Right now, the town is developing plans, in cooperation with the state, to deal with runoff, which concerns Masters because it's released into the bays untreated. Wastewater from a plant like Bay Park, the commissioner notes, is cleansed of the vast majority of sewage contaminants through an intense, costly process that reduces raw fecal matter to what is largely water.
The bays, staying alive
Masters, who holds a master's degree in biology, also says South Shore bays are far from dying. He likens them to one giant, highly adaptable living organism that has found ways to cope with the pressures humans are placing on it. The bays are a "very, very complex system," he says.
Masters also contends the bays need a certain "nutrient load," which the Bay Park plant provides in the form of nitrogen, to sustain themselves. The Spartina grass-filled marshes that grace the bays' edges, for example, thirst for rotting seaweed as an organic material needed for growth, much the way a garden needs compost. The marshes act as huge filters, or sponges, that absorb the ocean's brunt, especially during hurricanes. "Lose the marsh, lose the filter," says Masters.
There are other questions surrounding the pipe proposal. Lawrence Swanson, director of the Waste Reduction and Management Institute, a division of the Marine Science Research Center at SUNY Stony Brook, says treated sewage would likely disperse more thoroughly in the open ocean. He says, however, that the effluent could wash back onto area beaches if the pipe doesn't reach far enough into the ocean.
Swanson, who is an oceanographer, says, "It's not as simple as saying let's put [the pipe] in the ocean. You have to find the best place that will have the minimal effect."
